USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 34
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The wife, like the husband, might obtain a divorce for deser- tion "a year or two, when there was evidence of a determined design not to return . . . " Frequently petitions of this kind were entered by the wives of mariners, gone from port "three
366 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN
full years" on a voyage which usually lasted three months. Wives could not so easily desert their husbands, and such in- stances as the divorce of Hannah by Phillip Goss in Boston in 1690 because of desertion and remarriage are rare. Failure to provide and cruelty on the part of the husband were also causes for dissolution of the marriage bond, although they usually appear in combination with other charges. Marriages were declared void if contracted by persons within certain degrees of consanguinity, or because of impotence. Of all causes for divorce, the action was clearest and the penalty most severe in the case of bigamy. The punishment for "polygamy" was death in Massachusetts Bay in 1695; and as late as 1751 Ezekiel Eldridge, who pleaded guilty to the charge of taking two wives, "pray'd the Court that he might be allow'd the Benefit of Clergy which was Granted him," and was "there- upon burnt in the hand in the face of the Court." One of his wives was then granted a divorce, and the other marriage was declared null and void.
WOMEN IN THE COMMUNITY
Although women of the provincial period played an in- conspicuous rôle in public affairs, they held a recognized status in the community. The voting privilege was not determined by church membership, but by a property qualification. The existence of many women property owners in Boston in the early eighteenth century is shown from the Records of the Selectmen of that town and the fact that women property holders were allowed to vote under the old Province charter from 1691 to 1780 for all elective officers, may be seen from the colonial records of Massachusetts. As freeholders women petitioned for liberty to build or repair property, and docu- ments similar to the following frequently appear in the Rec- ords of the Selectmen of Boston :
"Boston Anno 1701 April 28th. Widow Mary Peirse her Petition for a building of Timber was allowed."
"Boston Anno 1733 April 9th. Liberty is Granted to mrs. Sarah Balch of Boston widow To take up the Pavement and Digg up the Ground to Clear her drain from Her House in Prince Street to the Common Shore there She making good
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IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the Ground and Pauement to the Satisfaction of the Select men and from time to time keeping them in Repair."
The old English laws pertaining to capital punishment varied in the case of men and women. These statutes stated that a woman sentenced to death was to be burned at the stake, and a man was to be dragged to the place of execution and hanged. Colonial records show only rare instances in which women were sentenced to death, and it is evident that some of these women were hanged. Records are complete concerning the case of Phillis and Mark, and from these it is evident that as late as 1755 a woman convicted of murder was burned at the stake. A report of the case appeared in a Boston paper, the Evening Post of September 22, 1755.
"Thursday last, in the Afternoon, Mark, a Negro Man, and Phillis, a Negro Woman, both Servants to the late Captain John Codman, of Charlestown, were executed at Cambridge, for poisoning their said Master. . . . The Fellow was hanged, and the Woman burned at the Stake about Ten Yards distant from the Gallows. They both confessed themselves guilty of the Crime for which they suffered, acknowledged the Justice of their Sentence and died very penitent. After Execution, the Body of Mark was brought down to Charlestown Common, and hanged in Chains, on a Gibbet erected there for that Purpose."
WOMEN IN THE HOUSEHOLD
The single woman had a precarious rôle. Marriage was often the "only honorable refuge"; and while too often the spinsters felt themselves not wanted in the family, they had no alternative. However, men at the head of households recog- nized the obligation of taking on the support of one or more dependent women; and of course there were times when they were more than repaid for doing so. Such was doubtless the case with Judge Sewall's friend, John Hull, who invited the Judge's sister, Jane, to become a member of his household until she should "change her condition." Subsequent mention portrays her "ministering and serving in a graceful manner."
As Calhoun describes it: "In the household of the prosper- ous Massachusetts merchant were indentured servants, male and female generally young, working out their time. Wage
368 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN
employees, even those used in his business, commonly ate at his family table, and lived under his roof. All such were, of course, under the paternal care of the house-father. Besides these, were unattached female relatives, who often lived with their kindred." Within this large assemblage family relation- ships had to be worked out anew.
"Slaves, male and female, were employed in many of the families which could maintain them, in spite of the fact that there was considerable public opinion against the practice. From the advertisements appearing in the Boston News Letter, it seems that women slaves were as numerous as were men slaves. The following notices show the nature of the trading :
"March 5, 1705. An able healthy Negro Woman about 23 years of age, speaks English intelligently, & is well instructed in Household-business, to be Sold. Enquire at the Post-Office in Boston, & know further."
"October 7, 1706. A Negro Infant Girl about Six Weeks Old, to be Given for the Bringing up: Inquire of John Camp- bell Post-Master, and know further."
CARE OF DEPENDENT WOMEN
The dependent woman of the community received support from the town. The main object in "poor relief" in the early days was to rid the town of "such nuisances," whatever the method and net costs. Provision for the poor in alms- houses did not become common in Massachusetts until 1700, so that prior to this date we find many records of persons boarded out by the town. That such a burden was distributed among various members of the community may be seen from the records of Hadley. It was voted in town meeting in 1687 that Widow Baldwin be sent from house to house, "to such as are able to receive her." She was to remain a fort- night in each family and "to go from Samuel Parker's, senior, southward, and round the town." The first specifically re- corded appropriation in Braintree appeared in 1694 when the town voted support to a woman. "Five pounds for John Belcher's widow's maintenance; thirty shillings to Thomas Revell for keeping William Dimblebee."
By the early part of the eighteenth century almshouses in
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DOMESTIC OCCUPATIONS
Boston were well established and opened to both men and women who must, before admission, be visited by the select- men and pronounced proper objects of charity. A note in 1722 from the Records of the Selectmen of Boston reads :
"At A Meeting of the Select men Jan. the 28th. Ordered that Notice be given to the Overceer of the Poor that Said Select men doe allow of their admitting Rebecca Holmes & Margaret Price, forrainers to be proper objects of Charity to be Releived by them at the charg of this Province."
Although society acknowledged the poor and spent a great deal of money for their maintenance,"yet the charity of those earlier days was cold." The first record in Braintree con- cerning the insane poor appears in the town documents for 1689 :
"It was voted that Samuel Speer should build a little house, seven foot long and five foot wide, and set it by his house to secure his sister, good wife Witty being distracted, and pro- vide for her, and the town by vote agreed to see him well payed and satisfied which shall be thought reasonable."
DOMESTIC OCCUPATIONS
The occupations of women in Massachusetts in the early eighteenth century were the immemorial feminine duties in connection with the preparation of food, clothing, and the care of the domicile. Industry, almost without exception, was organized around the household until after 1750 and most of the products of home industry were for the use of the family itself.
The household was a beehive of activity throughout the year. The women must have acquired many kinds of skill and engaged in much laborious work. Many days must have included the grinding of meal in a "quarn" or hand-mill, which was usually found in a room of its own. In some corner of nearly every house stood the "powdering tub" filled with a pickle of brine for the salting of the family's supply of meat. The great undertaking of preparing soap from months' accumulation of grease took place in the spring. This was an anxious time for the housewife, for if the moon were not in the right quarter nor the tide at flood, the soap might
370 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN
not "come right." The process of making the large supply of candles needed for lighting the house was slow and laborious. This occupied many days and evenings during the autumn. The wicks, attached to short sticks, were dipped and cooled and dipped and cooled in melted tallow or in wax from bees or from bayberry bushes (candleberries) until the candles were of the required size. When candle moulds were used the process was, of course, much shortened; and if the house- wife did not possess moulds, she might hire in an itinerant candlemaker who brought his moulds with him.
A day each month was set apart for the huge washing, which was undertaken without running water or any of the modern utensils which have transformed one of the heaviest of household tasks. Many winter evenings around the fire were spent in making birch brooms and quilts, occupations in which whole families might join. Perhaps no household occupation called for greater skill than the spinning and weaving of the wool and flax from which the clothes and household linens were made. The tasks of shearing, wash- ing, and further preparing the farm-reared wool belonged in the main to men, but the picture of the "great wheel" on which the yarn was spun is almost our symbol of the work of our grandmothers. Men also performed the preliminary hard work of pulling, rotting, breaking and combing the farm-grown flax before it came to women to be spun on the "little wheel."
The vast amount of work in the households of the prosper- ous in time came to be carried on with the help of trained servants. Many freemen and freewomen came to these shores bound to service for a period of years and worked out their terms as domestic servants. Advertisements for the dis- posal of unexpired serving time are not uncommon prior to the Revolution. Many families took children to bring up for the sake of the labor they could contribute to the household tasks. Usually they were children of the neighborhood, so the tie with their own people was not altogether broken.
The children of the family itself were numerous and all were kept busy with household tasks. Ten or twelve children in one family were not at all unusual and there are records of many families with many more. Perhaps the most im-
-
By courtesy of The Essex Institute, Salem
KITCHEN OF A TYPICAL EIGHTEENTH CENTURY HOME : WARD HOUSE, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
371
IN TRADE AND INDUSTRY
portant supply of labor for domestic industries was, however, the single adult women, one or more of whom were to be found in almost every household. They were to all intents and purposes servants without wages, and Calhoun believes they were so numerous as to depress the wages of domestic servants. Miss Macgill, in a brilliant essay, contends that the unrecorded and unacknowledged work of children and spinsters explains the accomplishments falsely attributed to the colonial housewife alone. She thinks there is much that is unreal in the tradition which has been built up around her.
The modern woman in charge of a household looks back with amazement at the multitudinous tasks of the colonial housewife. She contrasts the hard conditions under which her ancestor labored with the many modern conveniences which lighten labor in her own home; and she concludes that the American woman before the industrial revolution must have been more than her equal in skill, industry, and ac- complishment. But she forgets the many children and maiden aunts who furnished assistance to the woman in the colonial home.
The greatest contrast between the women of the eighteenth century and their granddaughters in the twentieth lies in their economic positions. The former were reared in the age-old tradition of the mental and social inferiority of women, a tradition seldom questioned by the women themselves. Their endless hard work won them little freedom in which to carry out their own plans. Without doubt many of them did order a world quite to their individual liking, but their success was most often won by the time-honored method of pleasing the men of the family. Deference to their wishes was given by granting them favors; and then, as now, there was little se- curity by this method.
WOMEN IN TRADE AND INDUSTRY
Women's domestic labors were not devoted wholly to the comfort of members of their own households. Many women contributed to the family income by selling their own handi- work. Spinning and weaving, knitting and tailoring, pre- serving and jellymaking, the raising of garden seeds and the
372 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN
brewing of ale became profitable by-employments for the in- dustrious housewife. The increase in population and the rapid expansion of trade in the eighteenth century created an ever-growing demand for these products.
Mrs. Mary Avery of Boston added as much as £50 to the family purse in the four years from 1685 to 1689 by selling her handiwork. The following extract from the account book of a Boston shop keeper shows the variety of items to her credit :
"By 2 yard 1/2 of buntin att ?
? ?
By 1/2 yard of ditto att 14d 0 3 3
By 3 yards 12 of half thick Kersey att 3s 3d 0 10 6
A coverlid 1 0
By 16 yards of druggett att-and a broom 3d 1 17 7
0
By 20 yds. black searge at 4s 6d 4 10 0
By 13 yds. of buntin at 3d 0 3 3
By 181/2 yards searge at 3/8 3 7 10
By a hatt 5-6 0 5 6
By 53 yds. of cotton and linnin at 2-9
7 5 9."
The freedom of women to engage in gainful employment outside their homes, but always under the watchful paternal- ism of the officials, is reflected in one of the Province Laws of Massachusetts Bay, passed in the session of 1692-93. It required that every single person under the age of twenty-one should live "under some orderly family government," but added that "this act shall not be construed to extend to hinder any single woman of good repute from the exercise of any lawful trade or employment for a livelihood, whereunto she shall have the allowance and approbation of the selectmen . any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstand- ing." Under this law, and the rule of custom which preceded it, women ventured into a variety of enterprises outside the shelter of their own homes.
The keeping of taverns and the sale of "Strong Drinck" was one of the most common occupations of women in the early eighteenth century. The records of the Boston Select- men abound in petitions of women who desired to sell ales, beer, wines and liquors "within and without doors." Their
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IN TRADE AND INDUSTRY
requests are almost as numerous as those of the men, and seem to have been considered on much the same basis. July 12, 1708, "Damaris Perkins widdow her Petition for Lycence to Sell as a Retaylor Such Sperits as She distills in her Lim- beck" was "allowed by ye Selectmen."
One well-known Boston land-owner and inn-keeper who "catered to the public" early in the eighteenth century was Anne Pollard, born in England in 1620. She represents a vigorous Puritan type and one historian writing of her says: "The history of Boston women begins with a young girl, Ann by name, ten years old, who was the first person to leap from the boat which brought over the exploring party from Charlestown, in 1630; and when, as Mrs. Pollard, she died in 1725, aged one hundred and five, there was left behind her a canvas, still in existence, on which the strong hard lines of the old face indicate a toughness which could well have borne the hardships of the early settlement."
There were few actual wage-earners except teachers and domestic servants and seamstresses, for the absence of the factory system in the early eighteenth century made industrial wage labor for women an impossibility. But trade was open to them, and the more venturesome fared forth into it with zest. Some widows took over their husband's businesses, while a few single women were enterprisers on their own initiative. The Boston Selectmen rented to Mary Bithin "the Easter most of the New Shopps under the Town House at three pounds p Annum" in 1709, but within the year the un- fortunate Mary was "warned out of" the shop she hired. Women were licensed to run "victualing houses" and one unusual instance of a woman applying for permission to build a slaughter house appears in the Boston Town Records in 1693. There were women booksellers and women printers in the eighteenth century, who were compositors and who also worked at the press. Some women in the coast towns were reckless enough to risk their savings in ventures at sea, as did Margaret Barton of Boston, who accumulated quite a fortune for her day. But these enterprising shopkeepers and traders and innkeepers were the exceptions, and most of the earnings of women were incidental to their domestic duties.
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EDUCATION OF WOMEN
The education of the New England girl of the eighteenth century received slight attention. At the time when Massa- chusetts was outstripping all the other colonies in her efforts to offer educational opportunities to young men, no provision was made for girls, and except for what they could learn from their brothers or parents at home or in the poorly equipped Dame schools, the girls of the period remained un- taught. It is certain that a large percentage of women were actually illiterate. It has been estimated from the registry books in Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex counties that sixty per cent "of the women whose names appear in the recorded deeds of the eighteenth century, either as grantors of property or relinquishing dower," were unable to sign their names and obliged to make their mark.
In contrast to the provision of many excellent opportunities for young men, the admission of Boston girls to the public schools was delayed until after 1789. It was not until this year that Boston established the first of the so-called "double- headed" schools. This was a grammar school to which girls were admitted; but instead of the usual co-educational ar- rangement, the girls came at different hours from those as- signed to the boys and attended only from April to October of each year.
The only chance for the girl of this period to study in school was at one of the dame schools. These were primi- tive, elementary schools which seldom attained any dignity or importance. Both men and women served as teachers. If the teacher was a woman, it is safe to assume that her own learning had come from the home or from another dame school. Crabbe describes a school resembling our day nurs- eries as follows :
"When a deaf poor patient widow sits And awes some twenty infants as she knits- Infants of humble, busy wives who pay Some trifling price for freedom through the day, At this good matron's hut the children meet Who thus becomes the mother of the street :
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EDUCATION
Her room is small, they cannot widely stray
Her threshold high, they cannot run away : With bands of yarn she keeps offenders in,
And to her gown the sturdiest can pin."
Updegraph cites the following instances indicating the general distribution of the dame school with a woman as its teacher :
"The wife of Ebenezer Field, the smith of the town of Northfield, kept the first school known in that town in 1721. 'She taught a class of young children at her house, for twenty-two weeks of the warm season.' John Hartwell's wife was given leave to keep a school to instruct children to read in Billerica in 1719."
These schools, sometimes called "ma'am" schools, were at first private enterprises, but as time went on and their position in the community became more recognized, instances are found of partial support from the town.
The dame schools in Boston came under the supervision of the selectmen fairly early, as the following ruling shows :
"At a Meeting of the Select Men, May 20, 1735. Mrs. Alice Haynes having presumed to keep a School for teaching and Instructing Children in Reading, without the Allowance and approbation of the Select men, She was Sent for, And being judged an Unsutable Person for that Imployment She was forbid to keep such School any longer."
In this manner, the dame school became a part of the public school system of the early New England colonies, but it remained elementary and never became important in the evolution of the Massachusetts school system. Boys attended the schools to obtain special honors in the grammar schools and girls were taught "all that it was thought they needed."
Although girls were not admitted to the Boston public schools until 1789, there appears to have been no definite rul- ing forbidding them to attend. The sentiment of the period, however, which definitely opposed it, was well established and formed an actual bar. Superintendent H. W. Small in a study of the records of nearly 200 New England towns found less than a dozen instances of positive statements providing for the entrance of girls into the public grammar schools.
376 EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN
Deerfield voted in 1689 "that all families having children either male or female between the ages six and ten years shall pay by the poll" for their schooling. Similar records were found in Rehoboth in 1699, and in Northampton and Hat- field slightly earlier. These cases were, however, exceedingly rare and the ruling for the Hopkins School in New Haven in 1684 expressed the public opinion in Massachusetts. "And all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school as ye law injoines and as is the De- signe of this settlement."
Previous to the formal admission of girls into the public schools of Boston, there seem to have been occasional com- promises, when girls were allowed to go to the boys' grammar school for short periods of time. Medford voted in 1766 that "the committee have power to agree with the school master to instruct girls two hours in a day after the boys are dis- missed."
These were not the days in which women could hope for new opportunities in learning. In fact, there is little evidence to show that women sought them or that they resented neg- lect. This conclusion may, however, be unjust. If opportuni- ties had been within their reach, women might have made as rapid strides as they did after the Revolution when the doors of the academies and seminaries were opened to them.
WOMEN OF LEARNING
The few conspicuous educated women who ventured to use their learning in public affairs had to face hostile public opin- ion. A comment in a letter of Abigail Adams to the effect that society found it fashionable "to ridicule female learning" indicates the sentiment of the times. The only op- portunities for intellectual development for eighteenth-cen- tury women were to be found in contacts with the learned. It is significant that all women of this period who have left any record of intellectual attainment were members of fami- lies in which the father or sons had received unusual educa- tional advantages.
In the Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Pious and Ingenious Mrs. Jane Turell, written in 1735 by her husband,
WOMEN OF LEARNING
377
Ebenezer Turell, are printed several simple little poems of a Puritan maid. Mr. Turell says of her :
"Before she had seen eighteen, she had read, and (in some measure) digested all the English poetry and polite pieces in prose, printed and manuscripts, in her father's well furnished library, and much she borrowed of her friends and acquaint- ances. She had such a thirst after knowledge that the leisure of the day did not suffice, but she spent whole nights in read- ing."
In December, 1724, at the age of sixteen she wrote a poem, "To her honored father, on his being chosen President of Harvard College," which begins,
"Sir,
An infant muse begs leave beneath your feet,
To lay the first essays of her poetic wit ;
That under your protection she may raise
Her song to some exhalted pitch of praise.
You who among the bards are found the chief. . . "
Although we may agree with Mr. Coit Moses Tyler that Jane Turell "left no proofs of poetic genius, more notable than are to be found in the desk of almost any spirited school-girl with a tendency towards emotional effervescence in verse," we can be certain that she had literary ambitions which could not be matched by many young women of her time.
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